Read Online Final Approach by John J. Nance - Free Book Online

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    â€œ Washington, D.C .—Among the victims reported to be on North America Flight 255, which crashed into another North America flight Friday evening in Kansas City, was a highly controversial U.S. congressman recently elected from Louisiana. Congressman Larry Wilkins, a self-described ultra-conservative and past associate of Lyndon La-Rouche, was en route to Kansas City to deliver a speech, according to his office. Wilkins’s fate has not been confirmed, but an anonymous phone call to wire service offices within an hour of the crash alleged that the crash was not an accident. The caller claimed that Mr. Wilkins’s flight was deliberately sabotaged by a person or persons who intended to assassinate him. The FBI has been notified of the phone call, and has begun an investigation. There is no word yet from the FAA or the NTSB on the possible causes of the crash, but …” et cetera, et cetera.”
    The editor looked up at his companions, silently polling the group.
    â€œEveryone’s gonna be airing this now. We’d better go with it.”
    Pete Kaminsky had fought the paramedics off for what seemed like an eternity as they appeared from nowhere and tried to put him in an ambulance ahead of his passengers. At one point he had spotted Jean, her uniform shirt drenched in blood, her arm hanging limp, yet still working with people. He had helped get her into an ambulance, trying to stem her violent shaking, a result of exposure, pain, and the trauma of what she had experienced, hugging her for reassurance before they closed the door. Finally there was no one left to help, and he had to succumb to the medics, the numbing ride to the hospital as unreal as what had come before, his admission to the emergency room another fight—there were other patients to treat before him.
    â€œCaptain, you’re bleeding at the forehead, you may have a concussion, and you could have internal injuries.”
    â€œTake care of the others first.”
    â€œSir …”
    â€œI’m okay. I’ll wait.”
    Behind him were two gurneys covered with sheets, one bloodstained. Pete realized their occupants were beyond help. A team of doctors and nurses was working feverishly on someone to his left, a crash victim who had gone into cardiac arrest.
    And in the room beside him a young doctor in a rumpled tuxedo was working on someone Pete could barely see. The patient was wearing a white shirt with epaulets and stripes on the shoulders—a male, judging by the exposed arm. The man was alive, but quiet and unconscious, if Pete had overheard the doctor correctly. He realized with a curious, cold feeling in his stomach that the man had to be one of the pilots from the Airbus. He tried to lift up on one elbow, a sharp, stabbing pain protesting the action. Straining, struggling, trying to count the stripes on those epaulets through the door and past the rapidly moving figures working to save the man’s life, Pete lifted himself even higher, the pain reaching new levels that he was determined to ignore. The doctor moved aside at last, only to be replaced by the starched white frock of a nurse, who finally stepped away herself for a split second, leaving Pete a clear view of the shoulder stripes on the patient’s torn shirt, the stripes which represent a pilot’s rank.
    There were four. It was the captain of Flight 255. Thank God, Pete said to himself. At least Dick had made it.
    As Pete Kaminsky was being coaxed into the ambulance just after midnight, a member of the airport fire department was positioning himself with a fire hose to wash down spilled and unburned jet fuel near the mauled tail section of the 737 which had been partially crushed and folded and had separated from the main fuselage. Most of the fuel-fed fire had incinerated seats and occupants in the main fuselage during the minutes following the impact of the marauding Airbus. The tail had not burned, but the twisted